Fall foliage RV trips in Tennessee

Great Smoky Mountains foliage peak. Great Smoky Mountains National Park fall foliage peaks mid-October at mid-elevations. Elkmont, Cades Cove, Smokemont campgrounds RV-accessible.

Great Smoky Mountains foliage peak 2027. Great Smoky Mountains foliage peaks 2027.

World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest 2027. Memphis's World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is the anchor of the city's barbecue calendar — hundreds of teams, elaborate multi-story team booths, and a week when the whole city smells like hickory. The 2027 dates are not yet officially announced: the contest has run mid-May for decades (the 2026 edition was May 13-16 at Liberty Park), and the organizers of SmokeSlam have announced they are pausing to prepare a unified Memphis barbecue festival with the contest for 2027, so expect the format details to firm up once that plan is published — treat the mid-May window here as the planning target and confirm against the official Memphis in May calendar before booking flights. For an RV trip, Memphis is well set up: T.O. Fuller State Park has a campground inside the city limits, Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park sits on the bluffs north of town, and Tom Sawyer's RV Park across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas parks you on the Mississippi's bank watching towboats push past your windshield. May in Memphis pairs the contest with peak patio-and-blues season on Beale Street.

Synchronous Fireflies, Great Smoky Mountains 2027. For roughly two weeks each year between late May and mid-June, synchronous fireflies at Elkmont in Great Smoky Mountains National Park flash in coordinated waves — one of the only places in the Western Hemisphere where the phenomenon draws organized public viewing. The honest logistics: the National Park Service manages access to the Elkmont viewing period through a vehicle-pass lottery on recreation.gov, announced each spring — typically late April — once biologists predict the peak window, so the dates above are the typical range, not a schedule. Plan A is the lottery; plan B is simply camping in the park during the window — Elkmont Campground sits beside the viewing area and books out for the season the moment the window becomes guessable, with Cades Cove Campground as the fallback. Late May is the front edge of Smokies high season, so Knoxville-market rigs need 8-10 weeks of lead. Even without a firefly pass, synchronous flashing is often visible around park campgrounds in the window — bring red-filtered lights only.

CMA Music Festival 2027 — Nashville. CMA Music Festival 2027. Nashville KOA + Two Rivers Campground for RV bases ~20 min from downtown.

CMA Music Festival 2028 — Nashville. CMA Music Festival 2028. Nashville KOA + Two Rivers Campground.